Old World
by Mjus
Summary: Challenge fic from Shiva1. Luffy and his crew arrive to an island where only one tree grows. In a world without seas two women fight for the humans' survival. What will happen when suddenly one of those women and Luffy change place due to someone's desperate wish?
1. The story of

Hi everybody out there! It's me, Mjus the Damn Fool, and I've started with yet another story while I still haven't finished the ones I'm working on (bangs head against nearest wall) I'm sorry, but I can't help it. However, this is a challenge I accepted from shiva1, but it won't be twenty or even ten chapters long. At the very most there will be only eight chapters if my planning is right.

**IMPORTANT NOTE! MAKE SURE TO READ THIS**; I'm pretty sick of people complaining about OOCness, so I'll tell you right now that this story is full of it. Don't like, don't read and don't tell me you don't like it, because I'm not going to change it.

This story is also a slight crossover with Clamp's xXxholic, but only one character will appear from that series, so I haven't put this up as a crossover.

Disclaimer; I don't, have not and will never own One Piece or xXxholic or any of their characters.

One Piece (c) Eiichiro Oda

xXxholic (c) Clamp

The challenge (c) shiva1 (I hope you like it :))

The only thing I do own is the "Old world", the plot and OCs appearing in the story.

* * *

It was the middle of the day when the space-time witch lifted her gaze from her beer can to greet her costumer; a young woman wearing combat boots, tight rags and two Japanese katana at her hip and a third one in her gloved hand, sheathed. Over her shoulders hung a grey cloth with a hood, for the moment pulled back. Her dark tan showed she spent many hours in the sun.

"You decided to come in person, huh? I thought you would use smoother ways of contact."

"I know, but I think you probably also knows why I've come like this, Yûko-san."

"Yes," the witch said calmly, taking the last swig of her beer and grieved the can's emptiness. "Very reckless, I must say. But you have come here because you have a wish, so let me hear it." Discarding the empty can, Yûko opened another one.

"I want her to be free, but there is no freedom in our world."

"That depends on what you want to free that girl from," the witch pointed out. "You can free her from her powers, and you can free her from the responsibility."

"No. What I want the most is for her to dream. I know she has a dream, have been trying to chase it all of her life but always chokes it saying it's futile, not worth it, that dreams are useless for… I wish to send her to a different world where she is free to dream."

Yûko quietly watched the grass as she thought about it. "Such a wish has a high price."

"I am aware of that."

Keeping a straight face Yûko downed half her beer. She knew about this young woman's world's condition, which made her wish a call for disaster. However, there was no desire for her friend's position, making the wish pure and honest. Still…

"You don't have enough to pay for your wish," Yûko stated.

"I… don't? This isn't enough?" she asked, holding up the katana in her hand.

"It is not enough, but let me correct myself; I can't accept fair payment from you. Only you have the power to purify the poison that plagues your world. Taking that power would spell doom on your world completely."

The woman lowered her gaze and bit her lip. She knew that already, but it shouldn't matter. There was no more time. There was no more hope. "I understand. So how am I supposed to pay for my wish?"

Yûko frowned. "Are you really willing to pay that much for it? Why don't you just give her your way of moving between words?"

"Because it demands knowledge of the place one wishes to go to, and because even if I gave her the chance, she wouldn't use it."

The space-time witch watched her client with displeasure. Even if it was a wish she could grant, the consequences of that wish could be catastrophic. Still, the wish was so hot and vivid Yûko couldn't find more excuses to deny it. She would have to compromise.

"Very well. I shall grant your wish. But…"

"Yes?"

"I have no intention of being the catalyst of your world's downfall; in that case your original payment is too high. Therefore, for the future, for your suffering, a price will be paid to you."

* * *

In a different world far from the one the space-time witch and her client discussed payment in we find wild and untamed seas dotted with islands of various sizes and nature. This world only has one actual continent, one that circles the Earth; a continent made from red rocks, thereof its name; Red Line. The seas on both sides of this enormous continent have since ancient times been dangerous and filled with both small silvery fishes as well as demonic monsters the size of islands. This is a world ruled mainly by a single government, a unity of more than a hundred and seventy countries. However, there are a few kingdoms standing outside this world government. Those are lawless zones without the government's military protection, and therefore the people of those kingdoms can be treated like trash by the rest of the world.

Standing up against the ruling government is a revolutionary army, its goal being to overthrow the order of this world to build a new one. The revolutionaries are led by a man named Dragon; the world's most dangerous man. Only a few knows his real name is Monkey D. Dragon, the son of marine vice admiral Monkey D. Garp.

Beside the revolutionaries, the world government has one enemy on the seas, although the hatred towards said enemy most of the time is one-sided. While each country has its own military force, there are numerous battles being fought out at the seas, because the government's enemy is not one person, not even an organized group of people. They are pirates.

In the history there is a hole, a century that was never recorded so nobody alive knows what happened. What is known is that before the "Void century" there was no world government, and when time once again was being recorded the government had complete power and the pirates sailing the seas were only a mild problem, no matter how strong they were. But perhaps fifty years ago a certain pirate took a lead and concerned the rulers. He sailed around the world for a few years before he entered the Grand Line, the most outrageous and untamed sea of them all. Entire fleets of marines or pirates couldn't defeat this single man and his crew. He conquered this wild world and earned the title of the man who had acquired everything the world had to offer; wealth, fame and power. He became known as the King of Pirates, Gold Roger.

Roger was the government's greatest enemy, and they never managed to capture him. Actually, perhaps to some relief for the ministers, Roger gave up and turned himself in. It was decided that this dangerous man, the devil of the seas, would be officially executed in the town he was once born in; Loguetown in East Blue, the calmest of all the seas. But the King of Pirates wasn't going to be good and just die and disappear from the world. Because of a foolish marine officer's question, Gold Roger answered with a wide smirk.

"My treasures, you ask? If you want them, you can have them. Look for them! I left it all at that one place!"

After having said that, Gold Roger died, executed with a grin on his face.

Believing their greatest enemy was gone, the government relaxed. That's why they were caught by surprise by the tsunami of pirates setting sails and heading for the Grand Line, conquered only by the King of Pirates himself. People dreaming of the great treasure Gold Roger had left behind swarmed the world, and the government had never hated the King of Pirates as much as they did after his death.

Today the Pirate Era is still on its peak. One of the newly upcoming pirates is quite a peculiar one; commonly known as Mugiwara no Luffy, or Luffy with the straw hat. His real name is Monkey D. Luffy. This adventurous young man has a long merit list already, though his career started not even a year ago. His crew contains of eight people, if that's the right thing to call them, but it's the easiest definition. From Zoro, the first to join the crew, to Brook, the newest member, they all feel the same strong loyalty and friendship for their captain. They are a small but tight crew. That is why they are about to face one of their toughest escapades this far.

* * *

Thousand Sunny, the Mugiwara crew's proud ship sailed forwards in the bright sun, occasionally hidden behind little white clouds. Usopp, the crew's sniper and one of the world's greatest liars, had just spotted an island, and Luffy, being Luffy, couldn't wait to sniff out all the cool adventures this island could bring him.

By the railing stood Brook, a living skeleton due to a devil fruit, with a steaming cup of tea in one bony hand. "Such an odd sight," he hummed softly.

"A-are you sure about this, Luffy?" Usopp asked and nervously tried to hide from the island behind the railing. "What if there are huge monsters hiding in that mountain."

"Really? Monsters?" the little reindeer doctor, Tony Tony Chopper jumped to attention and mirrored Usopp's nervousness.

"Is that really an island?" Zoro asked.

"It looks more like a mountain sticking up of the sea to me," Franky the shipwright agreed with Zoro.

"Have I ever led you wrong before?" Nami the navigator, a pretty and well-shaped woman, asked pointedly. "The log pose is pointing straight to the centre of that mountain. How do we get in? Are we supposed to climb?" She used a spyglass to look for anywhere to dock.

"Nami-san is so cute when she thinks," the cook Sanji, the only one who wasn't looking at the island, sighed in bliss.

"It must be a volcano!" Usopp burst out, scaring Chopper.

"A volcano?" Chopper's breath hitched in his throat, before he tilted his head to the side. "What's that?"

Robin, historian and archaeologist chuckled. "It is a mountain filled with magma, melted rock."

"Really? Rock can melt?"

"If it's hot enough. But it's only inside volcanos the heat ever reaches such degrees."

Chopper's brain started spinning and he went momently unresponsive. He was after all born on a winter island, and only after he joined the crew he found there the world outside his island wasn't filled with snow. The concept of something being hot enough for _rock to melt was a little beyond what he could imagine._

"Oi! There are holes in the wall!" Luffy called out. "What are those?"

"They must be the monsters' dens," Usopp mused hoarsely. "Wait. Guys, I can feel it. The deadly Can't-Land-On-That-Island bacteria…"

"Then you watch the ship," Zoro decided unfazed.

"Hey!"

Nami glanced past the spyglass to spot the holes her captain referred to. "I can't see anything in the holes," she said slowly as he examined them. "Can't tell if they're natural or not either."

"Of course not," Usopp said like he knew. "The monsters dug them out with their five… no ten meter long talons to capture innocent pirates trying to enter the island!"

"What? Really?" Chopper cried out, to which Usopp started painting out a picture and made up a short but entertaining story about how he encountered the monsters before and how he defeated them. Chopper was the only listener, but one was better than none, and the reindeer was a really good listener.

Sanji sniffed. For a second he thought he smelled something familiar that wasn't salt, wood or the tar Franky used to paint the ship's outside. The cook turned his head around to localise the smell, but couldn't find it again, so he dismissed it as imagination.

"Let's dock!" Luffy cried out excitedly.

"Aye!"

"What? No!" Usopp and Chopper cried.

Nami turned to the crew. "Franky take the helm. Zoro, Sanji, mind the sails, catch the starboard wind. Usopp and Robin, check for rocks under the surface. Brook, take place in the crow's nest."

"Roger."

"Luffy, we'll need your help to get to the island, so don't go ahead of yourself," the navigator said sternly.

"Ah, okay Nami."

Nami could only hope her captain actually would do as she said, but figured that if Luffy had to choose between going on adventures alone or with his friends, he'd definitely rather have someone with him. After all, he hated being alone more than anything.

"Nami-chan," Robin called out. "I think I see a bridge ahead."

"Really?"

Nami ran to the bow and followed the dark-haired woman's pointing finger. Sure enough; something that really looked like a rock bridge pointed out of the mountain wall.

"That is definitely manmade," the navigator stated and turned back to the crew. "Luffy, help Zoro and Sanji straighten the sails. Franky, steer towards that bridge."

"I hear you," the cyborg answered and turned the helm, skilfully steering the ship around the rocks, heeding Robin and Usopp's warnings of underwater obstacles.

Nami waited for the ship to be in position. "Alright. Take in the sails and drop the anchor."

Perfect timing as usual. Thousand Sunny slowed and gently stopped right by the bridge. Luffy however was off the ship and inside the tunnel the bridge led to before Sunny came to a stop. Much as usual.

"There's just no stopping him," Nami sighed. Sometimes she wished her captain could calm down just a bit, but at the same time she probably would never want him to be any different.

But as said before, Luffy hated being alone, so when he had checked the tunnel out he came running back to his crew shouting excitedly; "Oi! Everyone, you have to see this!" and ran back into the tunnel.

"Maybe he found something edible," Sanji suggested and jumped off Sunny's deck.

"I don't think so," Usopp argued and followed the cook.

Nami turned to Zoro, Franky and Brook who had just come down from the crow's nest. "You guard the ship."

It was not a suggestion. Brook humbly accepted the order, Franky had the same plan, but Zoro grumbled and boringly sat against the railing to take a nap.

* * *

Somewhere else, in a different universe, a young woman returned to her village protected from the sun by a white mountain full of holes and tunnels.

"Shaman, where have you been?" an old man demanded.

"Controlled the surrounding area, Major," the woman answered indifferently.

"My daughter is hungry. Go hunt."

The woman stopped in her tracks and turned cold green eyes on the older man. "If you want food, grab yourself a weapon and hunt it down yourself, old man."

"Don't dare use that tone against me, Shaman. I found this hideout…"

"But not the water," the woman cut him off and unsheathed a black sword, pointing it to the old man's throat. "Never forget this, Major. You found this protection, yes, but without the girl to find you water and me to hunt for food, you'd have joined the dead long ago."

"Exactly," the old man growled. "You are responsible for finding food and keeping us alive. We must survive, so find food for us, or else…"

The woman grinned. "Or else what? You'll chase me out? Torture me? Go ahead, you old fart. Threaten me as hard as you can. Ask me to leave and I will. In difference to you, I have nothing but my own life to lose." She sheathed her sword again. "I'll go hunt when I feel like it, because I don't care if you or your daughter starve."

"You can't do that!"

"Watch me."

She left the old man there. This had occurred a number of times before. When she was younger, when she had still believed in hope, she had gone to hunt whenever anyone asked for food, which could be a few times a day. Today she knew better, and her rebellion against the major was driving him over the edge. The only thing keeping her safe was the fact that she really was the only one around who could hunt down the only food available.

"Shaman."

She turned towards the speaker; the only person in the village without a name. Her appearance was not much different from anyone else. Her hair was black and eyes grey, her skin rough from the sun and the harsh life they lived here.

"Take me out hunting," she begged.

"The villagers won't like that."

"Please."

The shaman sighed. "And here I just told Major I refused to go hunt. If you're prepared, let's go."

The nameless girl followed the shaman towards one of the exits. They passed a man sitting against a rock and the shaman turned to him.

"Tell Major I've taken the girl out hunting, if you see him."

The man's only answer was an indifferent wave of his hand. He, like many others before him, had given up hope, but still didn't want to die.

* * *

Sanji, Usopp, Nami, Robin and Chopper followed their captain through the smooth tunnel, heading slightly upwards. It wasn't very long before they could see the light of the tunnel's end where Luffy had stopped, waiting for his crew to catch up.

The sight that met them was breath-taking. Millions of years ago this mountain had definitely been a volcano that had erupted one last time before going to sleep forever. Over the years, helped by rain and a large chunk of soil that had miraculously ended up here, grass and a single proud oak tree had begun to grow. In the bottom of this valley rainwater had collected into a pond. The sun couldn't properly reach this hidden place, still it was as bright as the outside world. Nami especially was breaking into an excited squeal.

"Diamonds! The walls are covered with raw diamonds!"

"This much… how is it possible?" Usopp breathed.

"Why are there diamonds in the walls?" Chopper asked, gaping like a fish.

"Diamonds are created from the charcoal the magma creates," Robin explained, like an automatic answer since she too couldn't take her eyes off the glistering walls. "But I never thought there could be this much inside a single volcano."

"Amazing," Sanji said.

"Hey, look at that!" Luffy called out and pointed.

"What?"

Instead of answering, Luffy took off into the valley, heading for the tree. His crew followed out of experience; if they let Luffy roam free, there was no telling what kind of trouble he'd attract.

It was Usopp who saw it first.

"Houses? Are there really people living here?"

"I'd imagine," Nami said, momently returned from the cash register in her brain that continued trying to count the value of all the diamonds she could see. "That bridge we landed on, the people who live here must have made it in order to go out fishing or something. They can't live on grass…" Just to make sure, she turned to Sanji. "Right?"

"I wouldn't recommend grass as food for humans," the cook said. "But if you're hungry enough and there is nothing else to eat, even grass and the leaves and acorn from the oak will do as food."

Ruffy stopped in front of one of the houses. "Hello! Is there people here?"

At first nothing happened and Luffy's crew caught up with him just in time to stop him from walking straight into the house.

A round window opened on the top floor and a young girl with red braids and freckles leaned outside. She stared at them with wide, blinking, reddish eyes.

"Hi. Do you have any food?" Luffy broke the ice.

Instead of answering the girl blinked again and closed the window.

"That probably means they don't have food to share in this place," Usopp tried to explain the girl's behaviour.

The door to the house suddenly slammed open and the redhead stood in front of them with a cold look in her eyes.

"Who are you and what do you want in my valley?"

"Huh?"

Everybody stared at the short girl. Was she a devil fruit user or where did that attitude come from?

"Well, miss..." Sanji started with a small smile.

"Shut up, ugly bitch. I was talking to the hot guy."

The pirates blinked and turned around. Had somebody else come up behind them without their notice? Nope, nobody was there.

"Don't you dare make a fool of me, man-whore! Of course I meant the man wearing the straw hat. I am way too beautiful to waste my time on blond airheads(1)."

If they were staring before, they were gawking now. Man-whore? Luffy was the hot guy? Sanji had never been this hurt by a woman before. What had he done to be treated like this by a pretty lady?

Nami couldn't help it. She looked strangely at the girl and glanced between Luffy and Sanji. In matters of looks Sanji won without even trying, because Luffy never cared much about his appearance.

"She's got weird taste," Nami stated quietly.

"Indeed," Usopp agreed.

"We're just checking out the place," Luffy said, letting Nami, Usopp and Chopper to care for Sanji's wounded pride.

"Oh. So you're yet another hoard of drooling beasts blinded by the walls here."

It was a statement, and one Nami didn't like. Yes, she did plan to steal all the diamonds, or at least as many as Sunny could carry without becoming too heavy and lose speed, but that didn't make her a drooling beast. This redhead needed to be put in place. Soon.

Screams carried down to where they stood.

"Onee-chan!"

"Rose-chan! Look out for the pirates!"

Two boys were running for their lives with newly formed bruises and a bump each. However, when they noticed the redhead surrounded by strangers they started wielding their fishing tools as weapons.

"You pirates! Don't touch onee-chan!"

"What are you doing with my bride! Prepare to die!"

It was probably meant as a serious threat, but it fell flat before the pirates. They had heard that phrase too many times to count, and they weren't dead yet.

"What are they up to?" Usopp asked.

"If I knew," Nami just said. "Robin, if you please."

"I'm at it, Nami-chan."

The boys fell on their faces when Robin's hands grew out of the grass and grabbed their ankles.

"Fail!" the redhead yelled angrily. "Tanpopo(2)! Kiro(3)! What are you doing screaming about pirates and falling flat on your noses? Kiro, if you ever want to even dream about marrying me, you must be cooler than ice. Get up, Tanpopo! A my little brother you can't act like a dog!"

"But onee-chan…" the smallest boy whined, rubbing his green nose, coloured by the grass from the fall. His bright blond hair stood out in all directions, decorated with some greenery of grass and a leaf from the oak.

"Rose-chan, a pirate ship is anchored outside," the second boy in his late teens yelled, he too blond with his hair in a ponytail. "We were just defeat… I mean we just defeated the demons, but some of them must have landed and come here. Admit it, you vermin!" he yelled turned to Luffy and his crew. "You are pirates!"

"Yes we are," Luffy answered simply.

"Huh?"

For a moment the two parties of people stared at each other. Then the blond teen started laughing and stood in a proud pose.

"Fear me, you pirates. I am Kiro the mighty, the ruler of Bright Oak Island. Just now I killed your friends and sunk your ship. You better leave before I get started on you!"

Not even Luffy would fall for that lie. Usopp felt like puking over the fellow's lying-skills. Nami, Robin, Sanji and Chopper glanced behind the bragging boy where the smaller one sat staring at them with tearful eyes and shaking from head to toe with fright.

"That Zoro," Nami sighed. "He just can't hold back."

"He really never does," Robin smiled.

"Seems he didn't use his swords. Good for them." Sanji stated.

"Should I treat your wounds?" asked Chopper, always the kind doctor.

The boy's face lit up with a slight blush. "What are you saying? I just told you I killed your friends! Don't you care?"

"They wouldn't die so easily," Luffy said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

A sturdy woman suddenly exited one of the other houses. "What's going on out here?"

* * *

Not a single cloud on the sky. In this world that was the norm since a hundred years back. Two women, carefully covered from the sunlight walked steadily over the rough, crumbling rock ground, occasionally spotted with a small patch of dry sand. There was no wind either. Nothing green grew within eyeshot.

They arrived to a steep hill and walked around it until they came to the shadowed side. The shaman looked around, looking for any sort of danger, before she started climbing rather easily. The girl in her company followed without a word. This side, this particular place the women climbed, was the only part that the sun never reached, so it was a safer trip with less chance of the rock giving in under their weight.

Once up the shaman stood prepared to draw her black sword as she looked around, the girl in her tow waited just beneath the cliff's edge.

The coast was clear and the shaman straightened. The other girl heaved herself up and looked with sadness at the skeleton of a since long dead, grand tree. Once upon a time this place had been lush and green. Seeing its state now you couldn't imagine. Everywhere you looked it was only rocks, sand and dry, twisted remains of wood and trees.

The shaman ignored the past and present of this place and started walking with purposeful steps. The girl hurried to catch up. Staying too far from the shaman was dangerous.

They arrived to a cave mouth and the girl instantly took cover between two rocks beside it while the shaman placed herself right in the opening, sword drawn, and used her ring, a metal piece with a small claw on it, to cut her face under both eyes and waited.

Behind the rocks the girl shook from slight fear. She trusted the shaman's abilities, had to, but this world was so full of dangers that not even the most careful person was safe. If the shaman went out of luck one day, that would be the end for their people. She already wore the scars to prove she wasn't invincible.

The shaman waved a hand to signal there was no danger around and the girl sighed from relief.

The cave was narrow to begin with, but after a few yards it widened so that both women could stand straight. The sunlight didn't reach in here and the darkness was pleasantly cooler. The shaman took off her hood and opened her cloak to reach for the medallion around her neck and sent a silent prayer. The medallion answered and slowly it spread a gentle glow around them, lighting the path.

The shaman walked first, all senses alert. In difference to the bright, dry outside world, it was harder to see the dangers and protect oneself here.

To not lose her light, the girl grabbed a tight hold of the shaman's rough cloak. The tunnel turned and twisted, narrowed and widened, all the time going slightly downhill. Once it split in two, but the shaman dove into the left one without even stopping. They had walked here enough times to know the way around.

At the first faint sound of water drops, the shaman put the light out. Stopping for a moment, letting their eyes get used to the darkness and calm their minds from the initial fear it always caused, the shaman gently pushed the other girl against the wall and acted as a human shield in front of her, just in case something would appear from behind them.

Still nothing. The cave seemed empty today, but you'd never know. There could be something sleeping in the cave they were about to enter.

Deeming it was safe the shaman once again moved forward, the girl instantly following.

Crawling only a few yards forward the shaman turned the last bend and looked into their goal; a former den of some animal where a little pond of water illuminated the cave with a faint, blue light.

Nothing was here. Both women slid out of the opening and jumped down to the ground. The shaman stood on guard by their only exit, but the girl went straight to the other side of the pond where two plants grew. Plants with thick, watery leaves the girl instantly put in her mouth and thankfully chewed on. They couldn't take any water from this place of fear it would run dry one day and stop nurturing the plants that were just as important as the water.

Still chewing on her third leaf the girl opened a small bag and put some leaves in it. Not too many. In order to survive, saving and reserving was the first, second and last rule.

The shaman flinched. A putrid smell reached her nose and she leaped over the pond. The other girl jumped and quickly closed her bag and dove into the darkest corner, the shaman covering her with drawn sword.

The stench of rotting flesh got stronger, making the women's stomachs turn, before a toad-lookalike creature the size of a pony slowly crawled into the cavern, its eyes blind and tongue hanging out, waving from side to side as it functioned much the same as a snake's. The difference between this beast and a snake was that a snake is only poisonous when it bites. The mare touch of this toad-thing could cause pain that was worse than dying.

The blood on the shaman's cheeks had already dried, but it smelled strong enough for the toad to notice and turn its head towards it.

Wasting no time the shaman attacked, cutting the creature right between the eyes, killing the first brain. Using the momentum she flipped her body around, the sword cutting the monster's head open before being pulled out and cut off the back of the body where the second brain was located.

The monster fell into a twitching heap, dead, but the shaman's duty wasn't over just yet. Sheathing the black sword she used to kill, she instead pulled out a second sword with a blade even in the faint blue glow down here. Somewhere in time the one who forged this sword had cursed it and given it a name. The name was forgotten, the curse remained. Using the medallion, pulling it over the head and tying it around the sword's handle to turn the curse around, the shaman started praying, the medallion glowing with a bright azure light, and struck the sword into the monster's neck. At first nothing happened, but slowly the rotten stench cleared away and, instead of poison, water started to leak out of the body.

From her hiding place in the corner of the carven the other girl was praying too; praying that this monster was indeed alone and that nothing would appear in the exit hole behind the shaman's back. Normally the monsters were alone, but there had been encounters with as many as three of them at the same time. This once they had been lucky, because these beasts looked slow, but in reality they were impossibly fast to strike. If caught by surprise even the shaman was an easy target.

Once certain the monster's poison was completely purified the shaman pulled her sword out of the body and put the medallion back around her neck. This was how the hunt worked. The only preys were these venomous, hideous monsters that crawled underground, and only the shaman's prayer could take away the poison so that you could eat them.

Using the cursed sword the shaman cut off the prey's legs and put them in a bag she had worn on her back under the cloak. The body of the monster didn't look appetizing even to a very hungry person. But they couldn't leave the body here. Purified or not it was still a corpse. It could poison the water here and kill the plants. Neither girl would take that risk, the plants were too important, so the girl took the rope that held her rags together around her waist and tied it around the dead body instead. She would carry it, because the shaman always needed both hands free in case they would meet more monsters in the tunnel.

* * *

"So, you folks are pirates."

"Yup," Luffy answered.

"Did you come for the diamonds?"

"No," Luffy answered.

"Then what brought you to this island?"

"Adventure!" Luffy answered with a fist pump, earning a hard pat on his head from Nami.

"We followed the log pose," the navigator explained, pointing at the tool around her wrist while Luffy straightened his hat.

"I see."

The two groups of people; Luffy with his crew and a sturdy woman with a big oak leaf standing up from her hair bun with her husband and the three teens, sat across each other in the grass under the oak tree. The old woman's name was Mama Oak, the island's leader.

"A lot of people who come here take refuge in the caves in the mountain until the log is set," Mama Oak told them. "You found the bridge, no?"

"Ah, that's right, a stone bridge," Luffy confirmed.

"Normally the bridge is underwater, but today it was low ebb and our boys here," the old woman looked behind her at Kiro and the other, younger boy, "went out fishing for us. We didn't expect guests during the time they were out."

"I have a question," Robin said, raising her hand.

"Yes?"

"The young lady…"

"My name is Rose," the redhead said snottily with her nose in the air and a scornful look at the older woman. "And I am way prettier than you, ugly wench."

"No, you're not," Usopp mumbled under his breath.

"Rose-san," Robin started again, though slightly taken aback by the teenage girl's comment. "You said people came to take the diamonds before. The walls are still covered with them, so I suppose those people didn't manage. How did you chase them away?"

"Some of the caves around the mountain lead here," Rose said nonchalantly. "But only two of those are safe to use. All the others are filled with traps. Even the dead-end ones."

"Thank you," Robin said happily, surprising the redhead. "That is very good to know. Now we know how to make a safe escape with the diamonds."

"Huh? What are you saying? You can't do that! There's no way you can tell which exit is the safe one."

"You forget something, little girl," Nami smirked evilly with a hard glint in her eyes. "We are pirates. We know how to make you speak."

"That's right," Usopp picked up with his creepiest look. "I wonder how many needles I can stick under your nails before you spill the beans."

Rose flinched back frightened and Kiro moved into a protective stance.

"This is exactly why you will never be the valley's head, Rose-brat," Mama Oak said sternly, completely unfazed by the pirates' threatening manners. Through the conversation her eyes had strayed to the straw hat wearing boy. She could sense something emit from him, like a scent. Or was it something she could see deep in his black eyes. Normally that colour of eyes would look like impenetrable glass, but this man's eyes were shining with an inner light, or strength. His face wasn't of a smart person, but maybe he owned some respect.

"Grandmother," Rose whined.

"Enough. Leave this to me and learn some wisdom. In difference to you, these two young pirate ladies both have brains."

"Oh, that was harsh," Usopp mumbled.

Sanji was about to say something when a gentle breeze suddenly washed over them, carrying a scent of something familiar.

"Huh? How can the wind blow down here?" Usopp asked out loud.

"This is the second time today," Mama Oak said with slight surprise. "We usually only gets them once or twice a week."

"Smells nice," Sanji spoke.

"Mint," the older woman smiled. "It grows every here and there in this valley."

"I see." Of course Sanji hadn't recognized the smell right away. Mint wasn't a scent you expected to find anywhere on the sea. "Which reminds me, what do you eat here? You don't seem to keep animals."

"Oh, gosh no," Mama Oak said with a laugh. "If we kept animals all the grass and plants would be ruined. The layer of soil is quite thin and it's not like we can bring any more here. The oak grows on the place where the earth is the thickest."

"But where did the soil come from?" Chopper asked confused. "Isn't this a volcano with melted rock inside?"

"It is indeed a sleeping volcano, little one. Counting the diamonds it must have been quite active in its glory days, but I don't know how the earth ended up in here. When our ancestors arrived some hundreds of years ago, the oak was already growing here, and the people gave this mountain the name Bright Oak Island."

"Yeah, that guy was saying something like that," Luffy remembered and pointed to the blond guy sitting close to the red-haired Rose-girl.

"I'm not 'that guy', you moron! I am Kiro the mighty, and I'll be…"

"Forever the bigmouthed little punk," Mama Oak finished curtly.

"That's right," Rose agreed, killing the rest of Kiro's self-confidence. The pirates sympathized with him, just a little.

"So what do you eat?" Luffy asked, now curious.

"Fish when my husband brings 'em in," Mama Oak smiled proudly to her husband who this far hadn't said a single word. "Then we can grow a little rice in the pond at the valley's bottom, some wheat to make bread and anything else we can grow in this soil."

For a moment Luffy just stared at her. In his brain he reread the list of things Mama Oak had just said they ate and found the lack of one ingredient very disturbing. "WHAT? NO MEAT?"

"Of course not, boy. We are vegetarians."

Luffy fainted. An island without meat was for him a living nightmare. But just as fast as he fell down, he bounced up, still with a horrified look on his face.

"How stupid can you get not eating meat!" he yelled.

Sanji immediately sprung up along with Mama Oak's husband.

"How dare you insult a lady!" they screamed and kicked the pirate captain into the oak's trunk where he disappeared.

Everybody stared blankly at the brown, unharmed and innocent tree trunk. Not a single scratch, and still they were all as certain they had just seen the dark-haired boy fly head first into it, but there was no boy to find. Everybody rubbed their eyes and looked again. Usopp almost expected the tree to burp.

"What happened?" Nami asked tensely.

* * *

With slight difficulties because of their load the two women were finally at the end of the tunnel. It was a relief to know they'd soon be back outside where they didn't have to be afraid of the poisonous monsters of the underground. Of course there were still monsters in the outside world, but they weren't hidden by darkness. The shaman helped pull the monster's body through the last narrow tunnel before she dimmed the light of her medallion and they stopped to let their eyes slowly become used to the brightness of the sun outside.

The nameless girl's stomach suddenly made a bubbly sound and the shaman sprung up with the black sword at the ready. They stayed still. Nothing seemed to have heard the sound.

Both women let out a breath of relief and the shaman walked another few steps towards the tunnel's end, the other girl short on her heels. In this manner; stopping after every few steps the women made it out without hurting their eyes. The shaman controlled the surroundings before she and the girl went to the south-side's cliff and hauled the dead body of the monster over it. They would have to wait for a bit now before they too climbed down the other side of the cliff. The shaman kept an eye on what happened below, but the other girl turned and walked over to the dead tree.

A long time ago this place had been alive and the tree in the centre had been a home to birds and insects. Birds were long gone. Nothing could live that close to the sun anymore, and with all water being found only underground the world's birds had perished.

An arm suddenly wrapped around her shoulders and pressed her back against a female body.

"Shaman?" she breathed.

"You and I share the same responsibility of being the hope of the last humans," the shaman breathed in her ear. "That's why we've both given up on our dreams, but I wish for at least you to be able to find yours."

Using her free hand the shaman pushed the other girl into the dead tree trunk where she disappeared.

* * *

The space-time witch watched over the occurrences from afar. The same person, born in two different worlds and ages, crossed each other inside a tree, alive on one side and dead on the other. Both of them were different in body and mind, but they shared the same responsibility of other peoples' lives. But in the passing the girl suddenly acted up and changed her course slightly. Yûko just watched. The girl cold awkward all she wanted, she still would end up where the shaman had wished.

"The price is paid and I have fulfilled your wish," the witch spoke, though the shaman couldn't hear her. "Alea jacta est. So what will you do now, I wonder."

* * *

**Author's note**; And so ends the first chapter. It's okay if you don't understand everything that's going on yet, because I'll reveal most of it in the next chapter.

1. No, I have no prejudgements about blonds, because I am blond myself. I apologize to anyone feeling offended by the comment.

2. Tanpopo- Dandelion

3. Kiro- Yellow


	2. Two worlds

Hallo, everybody. Sorry for the delay. I wanted this chapter to have been finished a lot earlier, but my planning just didn't go together. It feels like I lied to you too in the first chapter, dear readers; there's not a lot revalation in this chapter. Reactions please. The chapter title might change as well depending on what I decide for the story.

Now, though a short chapter, please enjoy it, and don't forget to send me a review ;)

* * *

_**Two worlds**_

In a dry world where the human race was near extinction stood a lonesome woman staring sadly at the white trunk of a since long dead tree. In this world, since she was a child, she had only had one friend, a friend who had fallen deeper into despair than anyone else and wasn't allowed to let it show. This friend hadn't even had a name, only ever being called "The girl". Still she had been the most important person to mankind ever.

The lonesome woman by the tree had just banished that girl from a world in desperate need of her.

"May you be happy, my friend," she prayed.

A loud thump and a yelp from the other side of the tree startled the woman out of her skin. She had never heard such a loud sound in years, but she did recognize the sound of a groaning voice and circled the tree.

"What? What happened? Where am I? I thought I was in a mpff…"

Her heart was racing. A pair of black eyes looked up at her from above her gloved hands covering a loud mouth. She overlooked the person quickly. It was a man who would get his skin burnt off if he stayed uncovered for too long. Without thinking she undid her own cloak, keeping one hand over the man's mouth.

"I am a shaman," she explained breathlessly. "Try not to make sounds before we get back to the village."

Releasing the boy's mouth in order to tie the cloak around him properly she certainly didn't expect him to talk again with his loud voice.

"Oi! What are you mumpff...!"

The shaman was scared now. There was no way that went unheard. Damn, she couldn't see for the sunlight.

Hoping that anything coming for them was slow the shaman pulled out a black piece of cloth from inside her shirt and tied it around her head, pulling the cloth to lay smooth over her eyes so she could see through the material.

"What are you doing? You can't see like that."

The shaman turned around to kick the man into silence, but instead her heart almost leaped out of her chest. A mouth had opened up behind the stranger and a sticky, split tongue aimed straight for him. Good for him the shaman had such good reflexes. She and the tongue reached the man at the same time, and the shaman's black sword cut the tongue off. The mouth made a squeaking sound, opening even more due to the pain, and the shaman took the moment to jump straight into the mouth where she struck her sword through the palate and up through the nose. Now the owner of the mouth definitely roared from the unexpected pain, but the shaman couldn't move. Her sword was stuck and she couldn't get it out.

An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled. As much as it surprised her, the shaman wouldn't let go of her sword's handle. The monster tried to close its mouth and tossed its head from side to side. Was this the end?

The arm around her waist pulled again, a lot harder, and the shaman, with her precious sword in a white-knuckled grasp, flew backwards, surprisingly far, into a flat chest.

She could see through the cloth for her eyes how the monster, a Rock-beast, stumbled over the edge of the cliff, followed by two others who had climbed up.

Somehow she felt the man was about to say something and quickly covered his mouth. She turned her head around, looked for an ear and breathed as quietly as possible.

"Anything that makes sounds is food."

* * *

Zoro awoke with a start at the sound of a thud. The cause was a dusty person in a hooded cloak. They must have fallen from somewhere, at least so was Zoro's first thought. The fact that the person was staring at the wood of the mast he didn't take direct notice to.

"Oi," he said to warn the person he was there. He hadn't screamed, or even raised his voice, but the person jumped several feet in fright.

The person's head was covered by the hood and the most of the face was also carefully covered. The eyes were the only thing that could be seen in the face, a pair of light brown orbs surrounded by darkly tanned skin. Said eyes stared at Zoro as if they had never seen another human before. But that's supposing this really was a human to begin with.

Franky appeared from the storage room where he had just put away his tools.

"What's this?" he asked when he saw the stranger aboard.

Once again the person jumped high from fright, this time flapping the arms around too so that the dust in the ragged cloths created a small cloud.

"I don't bff…"

Zoro was abruptly cut off by a pair of gloved, dusty and strong little hands on his mouth and the light brown eyes seemed to desperately try to send an angry message. Zoro would have ripped the hands right off his face and screamed at the stranger if Brook's humming voice hadn't made a gentle input in the conversation.

"Zoro-san, if my eyes didn't fail me, though I don't have any eyes to fail me, I swear I saw this person fall out of the main mast."

"Fell out of the mast?" Franky repeated, making the stranger flinch again, tightening their hold of Zoro's mouth, which in turn made the swordsman lose his patience.

Grabbing the thin wrists to get the hands away from his mouth he yelled straight into the stranger's face. "Can you stop it!"

The brown eyes widened, like in panic, before they closed tightly.

For a long while nobody spoke as the person just stood there trembling, wrists caught in Zoro's hands and flinching every time the sea splashed softly against the ship's haul. The three members of the Mugiwara crew exchanged looks. At long last Zoro decided he'd had enough. Being the brute he was he simply uncovered the head and face of the stranger.

The stranger was probably more surprised, but that didn't stop Zoro from being so too. Black strands of hair fell out from their confinement over the light brown eyes. The face was darkly tanned, even more so than Zoro's, with slightly dry skin. Under the left eye a deep scar ran over the cheekbone.

This person looked a lot like Luffy.

* * *

The shaman stayed in the man's arms for a while, listening to the sound of monsters feasting on one of their own. She couldn't calm down. Her heart was pounding like a war drum in her chest and she couldn't even out her breathing, or stop shaking. She had probably never been as close to death as she had just been.

"You saved my life," she whispered with awe. The man simply hummed through the hand covering his mouth.

Out of habit the shaman sought out the sun and realized how late it was. It was dangerous to be out during the day, but nobody survived the night.

Quickly turning around in the man's embrace, keeping her hand on his mouth just in case, the shaman pressed herself to him and held him close, breathing almost soundlessly in his ear.

"I don't know where you've come from, but the monsters of this world will kill us both if we stay out here. Before the sun sets we have to get back to my village, so follow me and move fast. We have quite a distance to travel."

Luffy was confused. He had no idea of what had happened to him, where his friends were or what was happening right now. All he really could understand was that this strange person with almost every piece of skin covered with rags and a pair of long gloves, a woman he had realized only when he grabbed her, had saved his life, so she was a good person. She was perhaps trying to help him, but in a very strange way. Why had she covered her eyes like that?

She kept breathing in his ear as she pulled that grey cloak of hers tighter around his shoulders and over his head.

"The sun is hot and strong here. You'll get burnt if you don't cover up properly."

She removed her mouth from his ear and pulled the black material up in order to glare him straight in the eye. Her eyes were a dark green colour with a hint of gold.

"Remember this though; my protection is only that great. If you stray from my side, I won't be able to save you. If you scream or make any sound at all, I _won't _save you. Clear?"

"Mupf," Luffy tried to answer, but the hand covering his mouth tightened and the girl's eyes hardened even more. Oh, right; no sounds. He nodded his head.

The woman turned away from him and pulled the cloth back down over her eyes. Just why was she doing that? She grabbed his hand and ran for the cliff and jumped. Luffy hesitated. He would be just fine because he was a rubber man, but would she be fine too?

The shaman knew she was being reckless, but they didn't have the luxury of time on their side, so she made a bet. As long as the man kept quiet and she kept a sword at the ready they should be alright.

There was a Rock-beast sitting right beneath them. Good. It would be the perfect distraction for the monsters. The shaman grabbed the stranger man's shoulder and threw him upwards to temporarily cease his fall while she used the gravity's full force to bury her black sword in the beast's neck. It screamed out in surprise and started trashing around.

Pulling the sword out the shaman swiftly turned and jumped to catch the man in the fall. The surrounding Rock-beasts were already moving in the direction of sound, the ones closest to the crying beast opened their mouths used long, sticky tongue as whips. When they realized that didn't work, they'd just stick their tongues to their meal and tear it apart.

If Luffy hadn't already seen the wonders of the Grand Line, the sight of moving rocks with mouths and long tongues would probably have surprised him more than it did. He didn't really have the time to stop and observe the phenomenon more closely because the woman forcefully pulled him along as she ran quite fast with his wrist in one hand and the sword in the other.

That sword. Luffy locked his attention on it as he easily kept up with the woman's pace. It looked a lot like the sword Zoro had obtained on Thriller Bark. But if this woman had a sword, it meant she's a swordsman. If she was any good then Zoro might have liked a match against her.

The woman suddenly pulled at his arm so that he came up beside her. She released his wrist and pointed to a small mountain resembling a Swiss cheese, only grey and with even more holes. The woman pushed him in the direction of it and ran behind him instead.

Okay, so that mountain must be their destination.

Luffy jumped over a small rock. At least he thought it was a rock because it was quite small compared to the moving boulders from before. When this little rock too opened a dark red hole lined with white/light grey stumps of teeth and a long, sticky tongue wrapped around his ankle in an instant, Luffy realized it wasn't a rock, and that he was about to lose his leg.

Once again the strange woman saved him, cut off the tongue and jumped over the squeaking… rock, never losing pace. Actually, she tried to run even faster as more of those large moving boulders seemed to gain life and move towards the sound. Even though Luffy would always be Luffy, he wasn't so stupid as to not realize what was happening. The woman's words made some sense now; anything that made sounds was regarded as food by everything around, and there was no telling which rock was an ordinary rock and which was alive.

The mountain was farther away than Luffy had thought. He'd seen it a few minutes ago now and it didn't seem to be any closer than before, even though they had been running hard all the time. Luffy also noticed the woman constantly glancing towards the sun. Luffy couldn't, because the sun was a really bright red that burnt his eyes and exposed skin worse than the sun and scorching sands of Alabasta had.

But this wasn't a desert land. There was no sand and no dunes (thankfully). All Luffy could see around him was a vast, white stretch of uneven rocky ground with dark shadows. Not a single speck of green or brown or anything at all. The sky wasn't even blue; the sun fully dyed it in red.

A hand touched his back and Luffy turned to see the strange woman in his wake. She seemed to try to nudge him into running even faster. What was going on? Was there a curfew? Or was it the sun? Whatever it was, it was obvious to even Luffy that they were running out of time, so the straw hat boy pushed his legs to run as fast as he could towards their goal. That's why he didn't even notice he left the woman too far behind.

* * *

Zoro, Franky and Brook were all staring at this strange little person who resembled Luffy, but who wasn't Luffy. The Mugiwara crew's captain's eyes were black, his skin wasn't this tanned and his body was definitely bigger. Thinking about it, Zoro thought this person almost looked like a child in size. But the eyes, no child had eyes with so many shadows.

"We should probably call Luffy-san and the others," Brook suggested.

"Good idea, Bones," Franky nodded. "I'll go," he continued and walked over to the railing and was just about to jump off when he suddenly stopped, like he hesitated. Very unlike Franky.

"What's wrong?" Zoro called after him.

"Tide's turning back," was all Franky said and turned to look out over the sea. The waves did look a little higher now than before. "Seems like we were just lucky spotting this bridge. It'll probably disappear soon. I'll be back with the others soon."

And so Franky jumped off the ship and ran into the mountain. Zoro and Brook turned to the stranger whose wide eyes were locked on something in the horizon. Zoro squinted, but couldn't see anything.

"Where… is this?"

The first words this strange little person said were barely above a whisper.

"You are on Thousand Sunny, our pirate ship," Zoro answered simply.

Those light eyes looked strangely at him.

"Pirate ship? What's that?"

* * *

Franky had fully intended to not stop at anything until he reached his captain, but the sight of a wall of raw diamonds was too much even for that resolve.

"Whoa! What's all this?" He stared at the glistering treasure as the wheels in his head turned with clicking sounds. "I can make weapons like nothing from all this!"

He probably would have picked down a few chunks of diamonds if the loud voices of his crew mates hadn't reminded him of why he was here in the first place. Franky sent a longing glance at the diamonds before his eyes turned to look for his friends. He found them facing an older-looking couple and some kids in front of an impressive oak.

"That tree looks perfect for the new drawing tables Nami and Usopp wanted," the shipwright thought out loud as he broke into a run. Until he heard Usopp scream.

"Move it! That bastard tree just ate our captain!"

"No! We won't let you! This tree is the power of our lives!"

Franky closed in on the group, surprised at what was being said.

"We don't give a damn!" Nami screamed. "Hand over the dia… I mean, step aside or you'll be cut too!"

"The Oak didn't eat your stupid captain! You're just here to steal everything we have!" the old man yelled accusingly.

"Don't be so stingy," Nami deadpanned.

"If that tree didn't eat Luffy then where the shit is he?" Sanji growled in warning.

"How should I know? If he ate a devil fruit he must have done something himself!"

"Luffy's a rubber-man, not a tree-man," Usopp explained angrily. "Now move the hell away!"

"Oi? What's going on here?" Franky asked, and now first people seemed to notice he was there.

"Franky! Great! Bring me the cannon and I'll make toothpicks out of that bloody oak!"

The cyborg stared blankly at Usopp before turning to Robin. She was usually the one you turned to if you wanted an explanation to anything.

"I can't really tell what happened either," she answered his glance. "Sanji and the old man over there just kicked Luffy in the direction of that tree. I think he hit right here," she grew a hand from the trunk and patted the place where she had seen her captain disappear into, but could only feel solid, rough bark. She frowned slightly. "But instead of actually colliding, it looked like Luffy… simply disappeared _into _the tree."

"Into the tree?" Franky repeated stupidly.

"Yes," Robin confirmed.

Two seconds, then the shipwright suddenly remembered why he was here in the first place. "That's right! You guys must come back to the ship. The tide is turning and the bridge will soon be underwater."

"Yes! Run while you can, you ugly lot!" a young girl with red hair yelled at them from her place behind a blond teen's back.

"We can't run!" Chopper protested. "We have to get Luffy back."

"You said Mugiwara disappeared into that tree, right?" Franky said, and immediately he had everybody's attention. "Someone who resembles him fell, according to Brook, _out_ of Sunny's main mast."

* * *

The shaman was tired. Her lean body didn't have a lot of stamina to begin with, and she had used a lot of energy lately. The sleepless nights caused by her wish to send the girl away, the stress of knowing what such a wish would mean to the world, the magic energy it took to open a passage between worlds, the hunting, the panic and adrenaline her price (however he could be that) caused for not knowing the means of survival here.

To put it simply, the shaman didn't have enough energy to make it all the way to the mountain.

When the man suddenly outran her she felt a slight pang of envy. She swiftly shoved that feeling away with the knowledge that the boy would probably be fine as long as he kept his mouth shut, his throat dry and made it to the mountain. This world was out of hope anyway, so why did it matter? The mountain was a good enough protection for the last humans, the magic circle could be activated by anyone and the well still had a good amount of water. The people would make it, even for just a few months if they didn't dare to hunt down a rock-beast cub.

Her legs had started protesting against moving a minute ago, and the sun was falling steadily, mercilessly. It didn't care, or it didn't know what would happen when its light was gone.

She stumbled, and her bad luck would of course have her landing heavily on a cub that instantly squeaked out loudly.

At first Luffy didn't react to the sounds, because that strange woman, (Sandman or something) had made the rocks scream more than once already. However, he threw a glance over his shoulder. He was alone.

Luffy skidded to a stop. Where was that woman? Had she stopped? Was she heading another way?

Questions didn't help him, so the young pirate captain did the first thing that came to mind; sprinted back the way he had come to look for the only other person he had seen here.

It was the sun, Luffy realized. He couldn't see because of the light and the landscape was only a blurry mass of different shades of light and deep red. He pulled his hat further down over his eyes and managed to see movement. Moving closer a dark patch suddenly moved and Luffy spotted a bright green head, and two huge mouths opened on either side of the green.

Luffy didn't think. His fists flew forward and smashed into rough, rock hard body armour of the beasts and sent them flying with a crashing sound that echoed throughout the area.

Before his arms returned to him, Luffy grabbed the woman and pulled her back towards him.

She probably got the air knocked out of her, but she was with him again at least. Checking her face Luffy realized she was in pain. A little monster was chewing on her leg, even with the black blade sticking out from its body. Sandman grit her teeth and cut the little monster in two.

"Run," she wheezed. "There's no more time."

"You too," Luffy said lowly but decisively. Lucky for him there was no monster in their direct surroundings.

"I can't," the woman whispered. "When the sun goes down and the darkness falls, the Rock-beasts will open their eyes and follow the trail of blood. You have to leave me here."

"Will you be okay?"

Sandman grinned joylessly at him. "Of course not. Leave me to die or die with me."

That was it. Luffy had heard enough idiocy from this woman to last for a month. He was Monkey D. Luffy, and he'd rather miss a meal than abandon anybody.

The woman gasped when Luffy promptly threw her over his shoulder. She wiggled and tried to give didn't say anything. In the darkening landscape Luffy looked for a good point he could use to rocket towards that hollow mountain. He couldn't find a perfect one, but there was a rock a good length in front of him to the left that would do. He took a few steps to his left, carefully calculating the distance. It's true he knew very little about math, but he knew his own strength.

The shaman hadn't had the chance or state of mind to notice it before, but when this man bent backwards and breathed in as if he was going to make a great effort into something and then threw his arms forward, she had to notice that they stretched.

This man had eaten a devil fruit, just like the girl.

The shaman would probably have screamed at the sudden speed in which she travelled forward if years of keeping her mouth clammed up hadn't kicked in. They were closing in on the mountain in a horizontal line with unimaginable speed, at least for her. For the man this was probably normal. The world of devil fruit eaters.

Luffy took in air and made his body a balloon for Sandman to land softly on. She was really thin, so even if she could take a fall from quite long falls Luffy didn't want to take the chance.

They landed, not as close as Luffy had hoped, but Sandman didn't seem to mind. She pushed him in the direction of the mountain, making no movement to join him in the run, so Luffy picked her up again. He wasn't gonna leave her and that was that.

The sun disappeared.

Luffy had only a few more yards to run when one of the rocks in front of him suddenly opened a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

The eyes locked on Luffy who just barely manage to dodge the tongue. But just once. It was impossibly fast. Luffy put his heels into the ground and resisted. In his arms Sandman suddenly wiggled free. The monsters eyes followed her, but seemed to only have one tongue and couldn't do anything.

Luffy fell on his butt when Sandman silently cut the beast's head off first and then the tongue. She was slightly wobbly on her legs, but she still waved at him to follow her. Finally she seemed to understand that Luffy wasn't going to go anywhere without her. But why did she take the monster's tongue too?

They entered one of the mountain's caves and the woman stopped and turned. Luffy thought that she might head back out into the thickening darkness and was about to grab her when he heard how she loudly clapped her hands together and started mumbling.

A glowing circle appeared under Sandman's feet, one that drew a glowing, fast-moving line towards the cave's entrance where it split and moved in opposite directions.

It lasted only for a minute, and when the light from the circle faded away, something in Sandman's hands continued to glow. She wobbled, and Luffy caught her when she fell.

The glow came from a large gold-coloured symbol in her hands.

"It's safe now," Sandman said with a sigh, but her voice wasn't much louder than it had been before. "The magic circle keeps this mountain invisible for anything not human, and it's sound-proof too."

"Are you alright?" Luffy asked tensely. She didn't look okay to him, the faint light made her look a lot older than before.

"Just let me catch my breath. I can't let the people see me weak."

"Why not?" Luffy protested. "You live here, right? If it's so dangerous outside you must take care of each other."

Sandman grinned, this time in good humour. "You must have come from a great place, then. I'm sorry, but there is no such thing as taking-care-of-someone-else here. That is a duty only I have."

Luffy stared at this woman. She made absolutely no sense in his ears. Not taking care of someone else? That was the best way of self-destruction!

"Forgive me," Sandman suddenly said.

"Huh?"

"I wished for my friend to leave this place, and you were paid to me as my price."

Now Luffy was permanently lost, but Sandman smiled sadly at him. She sighed and started to stand up again.

"Let's make way to the village… um?" She looked at him uncertainly. "Your name?"

"Oh." The pirate captain remembered his manners and smiled brightly. "I'm Monkey D. Luffy. Yoroshiku."

The woman smiled back at him. "I'm Zora."


	3. A girl without a name

_**A girl without a name**_

There was only one thing that was completely certain; she was not at home. Guessing wildly because of what Shaman had said and done plus what she could see, the girl was even ready to say this wasn't the world she was born into.

"What do you mean, 'what's a pirate ship'? Are you stupid?"

This man, the girl supposed he was a human, but his voice was so loud and still nothing had tried to eat them yet. Most interesting about this man was his size, though she had noticed his hair was just as green as the shaman's. The girl didn't think her hands were big enough to wrap around his wrists, and one of his hands easily covered half of her lower arm. That said something about the rest of him. Yet the one who had left the… pirate ship?… earlier had been bigger still. Remembering one of the shaman's stories the girl wondered if maybe this man was a giant. He definitely had the body mass to be one in her eyes.

"Ara…" the skeleton suddenly hummed softly. The girl liked its gentle voice, but was repelled by the fact that it could talk and move, as much as she was shocked it was able to drink from the steaming cup in its hand without the liquid dripping right through him and onto the floor. Green floor… "Did you not fall out of Lion-chan's mast?"

Lion? Mast? The girl looked around. According to the shaman's stories a lion was an animal, but she couldn't see any. She had no idea what a mast was. In the end she just gave the skeleton a helplessly blank face. It didn't give an answer though, since its skull didn't have much of a face to show expressions with.

"He asked how you came here," the man, giant or whatever he was, snapped irritably. The girl felt like she had to answer him.

"I was pushed," she said, because that was all she knew had happened. The shaman had held her, and then pushed her. She'd felt the wood of the dead tree when it hadn't resisted her, instead welcoming her into its dry, cold embrace. Then there'd been a surge of something the girl couldn't quite name, something vivid, warm and moving that had every hair on her body stand on end and make her shiver violently. Then it had been over. She had fallen out of the tree's embrace on the other side she had thought, but one look at the wood; a rich brown colour where she'd thought she would see the same white and grey of… well, everything that was dead, she knew she was not on the other side of the same tree.

"You were pushed?" the giant, the girl decided he was, repeated slowly.

She only nodded. After a whole life of talking as little as possible she couldn't understand the pressing look she was receiving. It surprised her more that the giant didn't seem to worry when speaking. Was he not afraid?

"Through the mast?" the giant pressed.

Now was probably the time to start talking. If the giant didn't understand her gestures, then there was no other way of communication. "Mast?"

The giant slapped his forehead before he pointed. The girl followed his finger towards the enormous piece of wood she knew she had come through and had thought was a tree. Only now she realized it wasn't. It was made of wood, didn't have bark and sprouted out of the green ground (she'd take a closer look at that once she had studied the "mast") and up where two perfectly straight branches grew from each side before the "mast" grew out wide, much like a flower but made out of wood instead. It wasn't only that she found above her head though. There was also an enormous piece of fabric tied with rope. Somewhere in her mind she wondered how many sets of cloths could be sewed from that single piece.

But above all that she saw something that confirmed she wasn't home anymore, as if she hadn't been sure of it before. The sky was so blue and partly covered with fluffy white clouds. The girl hadn't seen clouds this big since she was a child, and even then it had only been on one rare occasion.

Because there wasn't enough water to make clouds in her world.

Zoro studied the girl. Wherever she had come from it had to be a hole in the ground or something. The way she looked at the sky had Zoro wondering if it was the first time she saw it, but that couldn't be. Her tan was so dark and due to exposure to the sun he could tell from the lighter hue under her chin. But maybe Brook was wrong and this girl hadn't fallen out of the mast, but out of the mountain they'd docked at. That still didn't sound plausible. Brook might not have eyes but his sight was as fine as anyone's.

Shouts and splashes announced the arrival of the rest of the crew and Zoro went to the railing. The tide was over them and the bridge was completely under water. Nami, Usopp and Sanji carrying Chopper waded through it with water to their waists. Franky was last with Robin on his shoulder.

"Where's Luffy?" Zoro asked as he helped Nami aboard.

"We don't know. He disappeared into a tree."

"Into a tree?" the swordsman asked with disbelief as Usopp grabbed his hand. Robin helped herself and Franky easily jumped aboard.

"That's the one," the cyborg said pointing to the wide-eyed stranger with ruffled black hair and a scar under her left eye. She was staring at them like they were monsters.

"You think she resembles Luffy?" Usopp asked with narrowed eyes.

"She doesn't smell like Luffy at all," Chopper complained.

The girl didn't listen. Among all the noises she heard there was one she knew well. A sound she'd sharpened her ears for since the day she was born.

Water.

All but one of the people who had just come into her sight were wet and dripping with water. But it couldn't be. There was no way there could be so much water anywhere. Not anywhere safe. Unless…

She turned around. There was a low wall like the one those people right behind her had just jumped over too, and beyond it…

"Is that…?"

From where she stood, a yard from the low wall and to the horizon, there was nothing but water. A wide, moving blue and grey, shadowed where the clouds hung over it and sparkling where the sun's rays hit it. The wind hit her face and brought a smell of salt, stinging in her eyes that had forgotten how to blink.

How could it be?

The pirates stared at the strangely dressed girl who stared out over the ocean seemingly without breathing. Robin walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, immediately noticing how thin this girl must be under the cloths.

Wide, almost panicking eyes looked up at her.

"It's the sea…" she whispered.

"Yes?" Robin answered.

The girl's body started wobbling, as if her bones had turned to jelly, and her eyes rolled back as she fainted.

* * *

"So what is this place?" Luffy asked as he followed Zora into the depth of the hollow mountain.

"A dying place," Zora answered simply, as if it was a given. She had taken her cloak back and hung it over her thin shoulders.

The young pirate pouted a bit. This girl wasn't the least bit fun. Even her raspy voice held a tone of doom. She should work on her view of life, because she was definitely too eager to die.

"You'll understand soon enough, Luffy. I will tell you some of the stories tonight or tomorrow. First you'll have to survive the people here."

"Huh? Survive the people?"

Her voice was barely a whisper. "Yes."

They entered a great cave in the mountain's heart, lit by an oddly burning and equally oddly sounding fire in the middle where a few people sat waiting.

"I have returned from hunting," the shaman called out, not louder than speaking normally for Luffy. "I have food."

The people around the fire started moving, turned and stood as the shaman and Luffy walked up to them, and their eyes were immediately on the boy with the straw hat.

"Where's the girl?" Mayor asked sharply.

"Gone it seems," the shaman answered quietly as she put down the catches in front of the people whose attention was suddenly torn between the food and the man in the shaman's company. Luffy looked at the beast tongue. Hadn't it been longer before?

"Gone where?"

"How should I know? I always act as a shield and keep my back turned to the one I protect. But there are no eyes on my back, Mayor. I can't tell you how the girl disappeared."

"So, who is that?"

"A man."

"I can see that! What's he doing here? Boy! What have you done to the girl?"

Luffy blinked. "Girl? You mean Zora? Nothing. I saved her from the beasts."

The blank stares that met him filled the young pirate with a feeling he didn't like.

"Who is Zora?" the old geezer asked and glared suspiciously at Luffy.

"That's me, Mayor," Zora bit off. "I do actually have a name. You have all simply forgotten it."

Mayor closed his eyes and shook his bald head. "You don't deserve a name, Shaman. Just like the girl doesn't need one! No food for you tonight or tomorrow. Not for your _man_ either."

"How do you expect me to have the strength to hunt your food when you won't let me eat?"

"You have disobeyed me, shaman. This will teach you where you stand."

"Oh really," the shaman rolled her eyes. "Fine then. I won't eat. And you won't either, because I'm not going hunting until you give me my share of food."

"Go to your house."

Zora snorted and turned. Luffy followed closely behind.

"The man stays here," Mayor suddenly said.

The pirate captain turned and frowned at the eccentric little man. He didn't like him. He really didn't like him. "Like hell," he answered and kept walking, only to run into a thin back. "Zora?"

Pale green eyes looked at him with surprise, but then Zora smirked approvingly at him, and Luffy was stricken by how much she looked like Zoro.

"Good answer," she whispered and continued walking.

"I said. The man stays here!" Mayor called out.

"Why should I listen to you?"

"Because I'm the only ruler here. I found this hideout. I let you all stay under my roof and I expect obedience from everyone who walk into my home."

Luffy had never been very good with rulers before, and this bigmouthed man was really pushing it.

"I don't care who you are. _I_ am a _pirate_, and I go anywhere I like. So there."

He didn't see it, but Zora was smiling widely after that, and the mayor couldn't gather himself up before the pair reached a small hut and Zora let them inside.

"You did well," she said.

"Who was that guy?" Luffy asked, still slightly pissed.

"The mayor of this little village, if you can still call it as such," Zora explained, her voice now hoarser and quieter than before as she knelt down in the darkness of the hut and lit a fire.

Luffy took a closer look. It wasn't a bonfire. There was nothing that could burn. It was only a flame humming two inches above the ground. There was a circle on the ground though, gold and glowing and looked just like the symbol Zora wore around her neck.

"Cool! Are you a magician?"

"No. I'm just a shaman," Zora smiled as she pulled something out from a pocket hidden in the cloak. A piece of the beast's tongue Luffy realized.

"So that's where it went."

"Huh?"

"You didn't give the whole tongue to those people."

Zora snorted. "'Course not. Mayor is way too predictable. With this, we'll at least have food for tonight and tomorrow."

Luffy's eyes widened as the woman walked up to a small table made of some unknown grey material where a knife lay.

"Two days?!" Luffy burst out and Zora was over him in a flash, covering his mouth. She glared hotly at him, seemed to want to say something, but changed her mind.

Her eyes grew softer, sadder.

"Forgive me. I'm sure you're used to have a lot to eat, but there is hardly any food to find here. Please believe me, I'm trying to be generous. If there was only me, I could probably ration it to last for a full week."

Luffy felt faint. He was hungry and all there was to eat was a little bit of meat no longer than his forearm!

"Why is there no food? Can't you eat those monsters outside?"

The woman gave him a troubled look, like she didn't really want to share the information. "They are edible, alas a bit dry and though. But nobody's been able to hunt them for two generations."

"Why?"

"Their growing number. You can't kill a Rock-beast without risking a sound, and you've seen for yourself how they react to sounds. The cups are weak, but the people here have grown weaker than even them."

Luffy frowned. "If it's so hard to survive here, why don't you just leave the island?"

She gave him a strange look. "What island?"

* * *

The girl's eyes snapped open, but she quickly closed them again, covering them with her hands. It was so bright. What had happened? Something was strange. She could feel it. It was like everything around her was alive. Like there was blood flowing through even her own lifeless cloths.

And she was lying on something incredibly soft. What was that under her head? It wasn't a log.

"Are you awake?"

An unfamiliar voice. Not the shaman's gentle whisper.

Blue eyes looked down on her from a gentle face surrounded by black hair. Such bright colours. The girl couldn't remember ever seeing a face with such rich colour beside the shaman's, but even the shaman's beautiful green hair and eyes were pale beside the face looking at her now.

"How are you feeling?"

She swallowed, feeling the lingering moist from the leaves she had eaten earlier wet her dry throat, and still couldn't manage a word, so she only nodded.

It was a woman leaning over her, the girl could tell when the woman sat back the moment before she stood. The girl was only looking between her fingers and couldn't understand all that she saw. It would probably be the same if she could see properly.

The air felt heavy to breathe. Not because of dust or dryness. There were sounds in the air she thought she had never heard before. It was so hard to understand, to comprehend. The girl only knew one thing; she wasn't home. This was somewhere else. It hadn't been a dream. The shaman had sent her away.

_"You and I share the same responsibility of being the hope of the last humans. That's why we've both given up on our dreams, but I wish for at least you to be able to find yours."_

The girl frowned. The shaman. What had she done? Why? The two of them were the last hope. After them was nothing. After her there'd be nothing at all. The shaman couldn't fight _it_. The girl had never even involved her in the fight. The shaman was doing everything she could for the people already.

'What dreams?' the girl thought angrily. 'There are none. Don't assume things on your own!'

"Zora!"

"Ojou-san?"

The girl kept her eyes covered. She couldn't accept it. She couldn't be here. Her world needed her.

A gentle hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her eyes. The girl looked at the hand. It didn't wear a glove. The skin was smooth and the nails pretty and polished. She had never seen such a beautiful hand before.

"Here. I thought you might be thirsty."

'Thirsty?'

The girl sat straight and felt the world spin and rock around her, but couldn't lie back down. The woman with the black hair was holding a glass and there was water in it. A full day's share of water.

"Is it okay?" she asked, whispering.

The woman with the black hair and blue eyes smiled. Her face was so smooth and her cheeks full. "Of course. It's only water."

Only water. The girl accepted the glass and looked at its contents. She could see the bottom. The water was so clear.

Only water.

"Don't you need it for yourselves?"

Those clear blue eyes blinked with surprise. "It's only water," the woman repeated. "You can drink it."

Looking at the clear liquid the girl took a careful sip.

It was cool. She shivered. Another mouthful. It was so cold she could feel the chill throughout her thin body. She handed the glass back. She couldn't drink anymore of it. Her body didn't have any fat at all to keep warmth in so she pulled her cloak tighter around her.

Robin looked at the strange girl. Something was definitely off with her.

Chopper had watched from his working bench. The girl was in quite a bad shape and her reaction to the water worried the little doctor. The medicine he was making for the moment was for her liver. Her smell told him that her liver was in a very bad condition. The reindeer wanted to take a few blood samples but didn't dare to. She was faint enough without losing any blood, not even the small amount he needed to check her blood counts. Chopper would ask Sanji to make black pudding for the girl later. But her liver and blood counts were not the only concern. She needed treatment and that alone would keep Chopper busy until the girl was completely fit. Actually, he wouldn't let her leave until she was. On his doctor pride.

Robin stood. "I'll go tell the others she's awake."

Chopper nodded and continued his work.

The rest of the crew sat around the table in the galley. Sanji was busying himself with cooking something that would probably take up most of his time. The rest of the crew were not so lucky to have that sort of distraction.

Luffy was gone. He'd disappeared before, many times before but had always left behind a trail easy to follow. Now he was just gone. Robin couldn't help but notice how deep the wrinkle between Zoro's eyebrows was, and Nami was making the same face. Franky sat perfectly still with an expression of thinking hard, his sunglasses hiding his eyes from the world. Usopp chewed on his fingers.

Brook just sat there sipping his tea. Then again, he had always been the voice of calm in a storm of panic. Robin just wished she had access to the same well of calmness as Brook. Maybe then her thoughts wouldn't feel so scattered. She was still amazed at how well she had handled the girl earlier. Part of Robin wanted to just torture her into telling where Luffy had gone.

"She's awake," the archaeologist stated and watched how heads turned to her.

"Really? Who is she?" Usopp asked immediately.

"I never got to ask. She's in quite a state."

It wasn't a lie, and it wasn't calming the nerves of the crew.

Zoro had a feeling he couldn't quite shrug off; foreboding. Dread. It felt like when that girl had fallen out of the mast something had started moving, but it was impossible to say what that something could be. Zoro wasn't superstitious, he only believed in his own instincts and luck. Fate if you wish. Things like sensing misfortune or shaking incidents and worrying wasn't on Zoro's plate. Luffy's favourite quote was "take the hardships as they come" after all, and Zoro had quickly adapted to that. But Luffy was gone now, and dread was all he'd left behind in the swordsman.

Nami wasn't faring any better. Luffy was strong enough to fend for himself, but he also attracted trouble like a magnet, and he tended to sticking to them until they were solved. Which meant that if Luffy had gotten himself into trouble, which he doubtlessly had, he'd not be back today. Probably not by tomorrow either.

Sanji carefully chopped a carrot into exactly same size slices, all the while wondering what the heck he was doing. Luffy was gone, and no matter what Sanji thought of his walking stomach for a captain it chilled him to know said captain was gone, and that he was the cause. Sanji had been the one to kick. The crew had yet to turn the blame on him but Sanji was still waiting. Shit, he was already blaming himself. But kicking Luffy into wood wasn't something that hadn't happened before. Franky got mad every second time he had to fix the holes after the captain's unnumbered attempted kitchen raids. Why had it gone so wrong this time?

Usopp wrung his hands, going over the incident over and over again in his head. He saw Sanji and that old man kick Luffy in the head, Sanji kicking just beside the left eye and the old man hit the jaw. Luffy had gone airborne, his body relaxed like always or he wouldn't have been flying. Then he'd hit the tree and been gone. Or… maybe he _hadn't_ hit the tree. No matter what Luffy touched or where he went he left a mark behind. The tree had no sign anything had hit it, so maybe Luffy had disappeared the millisecond before he hit the trunk. But Robin had grown a hand and patted the trunk and she was still here. Usopp chewed on his fingers. This didn't take him anywhere. Even if he figured out what exactly had happened, how were they going to get Luffy back?

Brook sipped his tea and Usopp felt like cracking his blank faced skull open, more than it already was.

Chopper suddenly opened the door and came in, the girl shortly behind.

"Who are you? What's your name?" Nami asked.

"I don't have a name," the girl whispered. "I am a tool, the last hope. The mayor said tools don't need names."

"No name?" Usopp asked with disbelief. "Your parents didn't name you?"

"I wouldn't know," was the quiet answer.

Zoro lifted an eyebrow. This girl's words hinted at a harsh life, and her body confirmed it, but he decided to ignore it for now.

"So where is our Captain?"

Light brown eyes looked at him. They seemed to be darker now than before.

"Where I should be. I must find a way back, or my world is doomed."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked curiously.

The girl's face became grim. "Only I can find water." She seemed to want to say something, but apparently decided against it. "You have a beautiful sea," she said instead.

"The sea?" Usopp squeaked in absolute disbelief. "What does the sea have to do with anything?! Where the hell is Luffy? Where've you hidden him? Why'd he disappear into a tree trunk? Answer me!"

Those brown eyes bore into them all. There were fear in them, and maybe a little resentment, but mostly there was dread.

"In my world the sea was stolen, and it released the Sea Devil that only I can fight."


	4. From a world without a sea

A whole of three updates in January! Word of the month; effectivity.

While the story's going a little faster than originally planned, I'm afraid the story will be rather short unless I really add to the girl's adventures with the Straw hat pirates. We'll see what I do about it. I need to practice keeping my stories short anyways ^^'

Don't forget to review or I might forget to write and update.

* * *

**From a world without a sea**

It had taken some time, and a lot of stopping Luffy from screaming, but at long last, Zora was finally completely drained and as asleep anyone can be. Because she lay so still Luffy had to check if she was still breathing. He was still full of question marks and dying to straighten them out. Zora had had to promise to tell him everything the next day after she'd had some rest. But there was only one bed in her little home, and that could hardly even be called a bed. It was only a mat and a small cover. Zora had started to shake dust from her cloak and had reached out to hang it on some hook on the wall when she'd looked to the bed and decided her cloak would do for her while Luffy could take the blanket.

Luffy now lay on Zora's mat-bed with the woman pressed tightly against his chest, sharing the cloak, blanket and body heat. The temperature had dropped without Luffy's attention, but now he was kind of grateful for the woman's closeness. The pirate captain had realized before that Zora was thin, but now that he lay still and had nothing else to distract him, he noticed that the woman was actually hardly more than skin and bones under the layer of cloths she wore.

The pirate sighed and fell asleep.

* * *

Luffy's crew had all become silent as they stared at a young girl who was there with them instead of their crazy captain.

"Your sea was… stolen?" Usopp asked slowly.

The girl nodded in confirmation.

"How?"

"A devil fruit user."

Robin frowned in confusion. "The sea covers most of the world save for the Red Line and the islands. No matter what, _stealing_ the sea is impossible, especially for devil fruit users."

"I heard so," the girl nodded.

Sanji decided to pull out a chair and invite the girl to sit. "It sounds like you have a lot to tell us, so please take a seat," the cook said with a gentle tone.

The girl gave him a weird look, glanced at the empty chair first and then studied the pirates to figure out how to "take a seat" on it. She had never seen a chair before.

It was comfortable! Just like the bed earlier it was so comfortable she could just snuggle up in it and fall asleep. She probably would if she had the time.

Chopper stared at the newcomer with his mouth open. In his little world there was Luffy and the crew who were his best friends and he loved dearly all the time and Sunny was their home. Outside of that were the adventures they all lived for. It was always exciting and scary at the same time to find a new island. The islands though were quite a small part of Chopper's everyday life. Everything else was the sea. Water and more water going on and on without an end. And stealing, Chopper knew, meant taking something for themselves and/or hiding it. This was where the reindeer's mind short circuited.

"Is someone hiding the sea somewhere?" he asked, but the girl shook her head.

"It was two hundred years ago," the girl whispered.

Usopp narrowed his eyes at her. "You've lived without a sea for two hundred years?"

A nod of confirmation.

The sniper was just about to ask how when Nami interrupted. "Forget about the sea. What happened to our captain? Where is Luffy?!"

"Probably in my world. Most likely dead."

"What do you mean?" Zoro asked darkly.

"Anything that makes sounds is food for the Rock-beasts."

Silence. The pirates glanced at each other.

"Luffy can take care of himself," Zoro stated firmly. "He's probably the one feeding off the… what did you call them? Rock-beasts?"

The girl said nothing. While she knew little about these people, she could understand that this Luffy person was important to them, but was treated very differently from her. She could save these people the harsh truth.

Robin decided to pick up where they left off. "Can you please start from the beginning? Who are you and how did you come here? I believe that if we know that, we can send you back to your world and have our captain in return."

The girl looked her deep in the eyes. For some reason the brown orbs seemed even darker now than before. Zoro noticed that too. The girl's eyes were steadily growing darker.

The girl was just about to open her mouth when the blond man interrupted.

"Please start by giving us your name, lady."

She looked at him. "I said; I have no name."

"Huh? Surely you have some sort of name or title. What do your folks call you by?"

"Girl."

Sanji crooked his visible eyebrow. "Girl? That's it?"

She nodded.

"Is that what your friends call you too?" Usopp asked.

"I have no friends. Only the shaman."

The pirates shared looks. This was getting them nowhere. Nami rubbed her forehead.

"Fine. We'll just call you Ruffled for now. How did you get here?"

The girl looked to Zoro who sighed.

"She said she was pushed."

Robin turned to him. "Pushed?"

"Through wood," the girl said.

"Wood? You mean like, pushed into a tree just like we did with Luffy?" Usopp asked and received a positive nod. "So if we push you into the same tree Luffy disappeared into, he will come back?"

To this the girl answered by shrugging her shoulders.

"Let's try it," Zoro stated and stood.

"Oi! We can't just throw a lady into a tree like we did Luffy. She's fragile," Sanji protested.

"No. Please do," the girl interfered, her whispering voice strangely enough cutting into Sanji and Zoro's newest fight. "If there is a way for me to get back home, I don't care how it's done."

"You can't leave yet!" Chopper argued this time. "You're not fit for travelling. I absolutely forbid!"

The girl's suddenly ice cold eyes bore into the little doctor. "I've no obligation to obey," she whispered. "I must return."

"Even if you say so, I'm afraid we'll have to wait until the next ebb," Nami sighed.

The girl gave her a look of disbelief.

"It's not my fault. The bridge is underwater and so is the only safe entrance we know of."

"What about the other holes in the mountain?" Franky asked.

"That snotty bitch we met inside the mountain told us that only two tunnels are safe to use, and one of them is now underwater."

"Leave that to me," the girl whispered confidently.

* * *

Morning, or so a soft voice told him, but when Luffy opened his eyes all he could see was dark grey. No shapes and hardly even any shadows.

Something moved against his chest, trying to get out of his grasp it seemed and Luffy looked down to see what it was.

Pale green exchanged the grey for a moment before a hand started rubbing his face.

"Your eyes are full of dust. Let go of me now, Luffy. I need to fetch water."

The boy sat up and tried to rub his eyes, but his hands were about as dusty as his eyes. Where was he? Oh, right. He fell through a tree and ended up in this strange place yesterday. He hoped his nakama were okay. They could take care of themselves, but being a world apart from them didn't feel good. How was he going to get back? Zora had said something really strange about it yesterday about a price. He was paid to Zora as a price? A price from whom?

Luffy tried to blink the dust out of his eyes. Where had Zora gone to? Hadn't she said she would just fetch some water? How long could that take?

He waited some more, but still no Zora. With all the blinking Luffy did his eyes were almost free from dust now and he could make out shapes in the greyness. Why was everything grey? Floor, walls, roof, table, mat, cover, himself. Everything in this room was grey.

Then he noticed something in a corner, something that wasn't grey. A collection of items it seemed, one of them being a staff with a familiar symbol made of gold at the top.

Luffy stood and went over to the things, curiously examining them. It really was gold, all shaped into the same familiar symbol fastened on different objects. There was the staff, a belt, a headband… one of the things looked just like a wand.

"Nine out of ten blessed items."

"Huh?"

Luffy turned around to find Zora standing in the doorway. She held up the symbol hanging around her neck. "I have the tenth one."

"Oh. That's where I've seen it before," Luffy exclaimed, or tried to. His throat was so dry it felt like he hadn't had a drink for days.

"I've fetched today's ration of water," Zora continued and put a bucket on the table. "It has to last all day, so don't drink too much now or we won't have anything to drink at noon or tonight."

Luffy once again stared at the half-full bucket of water.

"Ne."

"Yes?"

"Is this a desert land? Where is all the water?"

The woman sighed and carefully wet a corner of her cloak. "Remember I told you yesterday that there are no oceans in this world?"

"Yes. How can there be no sea? What about adventures?! Adventures!"

Zora smiled at him as she gently wiped the rest of the dust from Luffy's eyes. "I promised I'd tell you. But not here. Now, drink this and we'll be on our way to the archives."

Luffy accepted the mug of water. "What's in the archives?"

* * *

Nami didn't trust Ruffled. Sure, the girl hadn't done anything suspicious, nor did she seem to be very dangerous. Damn, the girl was so thin she looked like she'd break if anybody touched her. Still, Nami wasn't like Luffy, she didn't trust everybody she met.

They had sailed as close to the mountain as possible and Sanji had jumped into one of the caves to Ruffle's directions. Now the two of them stood in the cave mouth and stared into the dark of it, the girl supporting herself on the wall.

"Well?" Nami called.

"Just a moment, she says," Sanji answered and turned back to the girl.

She had covered up so that only her eyes were visible, though not even they could be seen now as she had closed them in concentration. Sanji was suspicious, but this was the Grand Line. Other world or not, this girl could very possibly have a devil fruit power.

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

"There is a passage into the heart of the mountain on the other side," she whispered so quietly Sanji hardly heard her. "In difference to all the other caves, that one has nothing unnatural in it."

"When you say unnatural, what does it mean?" the cook asked carefully.

"I don't know. I can only feel my way through the stone, and there are things in it that is not stone, and there are tensions."

Booby traps, Sanji thought and nodded. "All right. How are we supposed to know which cave is the safe passage?"

"I'll tell you where it is," the girl promised.

The cook accepted the answer, picked up the girl and jumped back to Sunny. "Nami-san. We must circle the mountain to the other side. Ojou-san said the other safe passage is there."

The navigator hit the palm of her hand. "Of course. It's a back door. Franky, take the helm. Chopper and Robin, look out for reefs. Usopp, Zoro, Sanji raise the square and alt sails."

"Ah, Nami-san is so lovely when she takes command," Sanji sighed blissfully.

Ruffled sent an odd look after his back as the cook left to fulfil his order, then the ship started to move. The girl would never get used to it she was sure. Part of her still couldn't comprehend the fact she was in another world. She couldn't comprehend the fact she could see the ocean, the great blue, life's cradle. How often hadn't she dreamt about it returning to her world? To once again imprison the sea devil under the deepest and darkest parts of ocean from where the monster would never be able to escape.

It that could only happen then life would return to her world, and she would be free.

The ship slowly moved away from the mountain and once out of the reef Nami ordered to raise the main sail to speed up.

The girl didn't really know what she wanted to watch the most; the ship, the sea or the mountain rising up of it.

The ship was most interesting with all the rope and sails and the construction of it in general. The feel of the fresh wood under her feet and the wooden railing she held on to was almost as if the ship was alive. All of it moved with the sounds of creaks and groans. The girl couldn't help but love it.

The sea was a dream. Deep, blue, breathing and stretching as far as the eye could see. The girl knew from the shaman's stories the sea was full of life and the people living on earth knew more about the moon than about the life underneath the surface of the sea. There were dangerous creatures swimming the great blue, but more than that there was food. Food enough to feed the entire world. Millions of different creatures and animals that could be eaten.

At last there was the mountain. The girl decided she should take a good look at it. Though she had seen almost nothing but stone and rocks all of her life, this mountain was different. It wasn't grey. Or yes it was, but not all grey. When she tried to see what colour the rocks of mountain had she realized there wasn't only one colour. There were a hundred; all hues of grey, black, red, orange, white, pink and brown. Where the ocean waves splashed at the cliffs was also beautiful shades of deep or faded green.

The girl turned around to look for somebody to ask. As if called, giant with the green hair walked up to her.

"Is there vegetation growing in the sea?" she asked.

"Of course there is," the giant answered and sat on the railing.

The girl returned her gaze to the mountain. So there were green plants growing even under the sea. She had to tell the shaman once she returned back to her own world. The missing books of the archives must have been about underwater vegetation.

"Hey, Ruffled!" Nami called from the alt. "We're behind the mountain now. Where is the safe passage?"

The girl stood and walked over to where the tangerine-haired woman stood. "I can't tell unless I touch the mountain," she whispered to her.

Nami took a step back, not liking the closeness, and the whispering creeped her out. "I get it. Secure the main sail. Robin and Chopper stay in the bow. Franky, take us in."

There seemed to be more underwater obstacles on this side the girl thought since the dark-haired woman and the furry little animal at the front called out a lot more often and the ship rocked until Ruffled felt sick. However, the other people on the ship stood and walked like their footing wasn't moving at all, and the girl couldn't help a prick of envy in her heart.

Nami didn't like to put Sunny into such dangerous waters, but what choice did she have? She wanted Luffy back. But this side of the mountain was more dangerous than the front. They couldn't pull Sunny any closer.

"Okay, this is as close as we can get," she decided when there was still a good distance left to the mountain, but she wouldn't risk the ship. "Franky. Can you build a bridge or something that reaches the closest cave?"

"I'm on it, nee-chan."

The giant man with blue hair and wearing almost nothing (the girl did find it a little disturbing, but only because she thought about the scorching sun in her own world) was a fast worker. Ruffled had barely turned to look at him before he started pulling a long piece of many pieces of wood stuck together, and this piece was getting longer under loud bangs from a black… something, the girl couldn't tell what it was, until the wood became a bridge all the way to the mountain.

Ruffled let out a breath of awe.

"Good work, Franky," Nami said matter-of-factly. "Your turn, Ruffled. Find the passage and bring me the diamonds."

The girl gave the bright-haired woman a weird look.

"Just ignore her and go," Usopp urged and even nudged the girl onto the bridge.

For a moment the girl thought the bridge wouldn't hold, because she had only ever walked on hard stone before she landed on the ship, but the wood reassured her. It felt strong and alive under her touch, almost demanding her trust. The girl couldn't argue. In fact she didn't even have a choice. She had to return to where she belonged and the people here wanted their friend back.

It felt open. That's the first thing she thought when she left the safety on the ship. Nothing but air surrounded her and the wind played around her. She quickly figured she had to keep a tight hold of her cloak if she didn't want to be blown off the bridge.

An arm grabbed her around the waist and the girl looked up into the blue eye of Sanji.

"The wind picked up, so we should hurry."

The girl's only answer was a nod and a determined look from a pair of dark brown eyes. The cook was a little impressed by this girl. She was hardly more than skin and bones and yet she had enough spirit to be reckless.

They made it to the mountain and the girl placed a hand on the stone. It took only a second or two before she lifted her head and pointed upwards.

"Okay," Sanji said and gently patted Ruffle's shoulder. "Wait here while we fix some rope."

He started walking back to the ship, looking at Nami and Robin, whose gazes were slowly rising. Strange. All the crewmembers seemed to be following something with their gaze. Something that moved upwards.

Sanji turned and saw Ruffled weren't where he'd left her. She was way up the mountainside, climbing seemingly only with one hand while her feet moved as if she was walking a staircase. Then she suddenly came to a stop and disappeared behind a cliff, reappearing on the other side and waved at them.

"_That's_ where we're going?" Sanji heard Usopp ask.

"Of course," Nami said. "This island works that way. The main entrance is low and hidden by the tide. The back door is high and hidden by that cliff."

"Urg. Guys, guys. I think I have the deadly can't-climb-this-mountain disease."

"How can she climb the mountainside so easily?" Robin asked.

"We can worry about that later," Nami decided. "Usopp; Rope. You, I, Sanji and Chopper are going in."

* * *

Zora was a magician. It didn't matter what she called herself, she was a magician in Luffy's eyes.

After a bite, _one_ bite of that monster tongue that couldn't even start to quell Luffy's hunger and Zora had had the nerve to call breakfast, they had left her little hut and passed the well guarded by a man who looked like a dried up old man to Luffy, yet Zora said he was one of the strongest men in the village. Luffy had stared at the man who returned his gaze with a mistrusting glare.

"Is that guy keeping all the water to himself?" Luffy asked Zora.

"No. He's only there to make sure nobody gets more than their ration of water."

"Aha… So he does keep all the water to himself."

The woman stifled a laugh. "Yes, you are right in a sense. He takes a drink whenever nobody's looking. That's how he's grown stronger than most here, even me. But Major trusts him, so nobody has a say in the matter."

"Your major is a bastard," Luffy stated.

"So true."

They arrived at the wall and Luffy could see Zora's symbol carved into the rock. She placed her hand on the symbol, it started to glow and grow in size, opening a hole in the wall big enough for the two to enter a cave hidden behind it.

"Wow! Zora, you're so cool!" Luffy loudly voiced his appreciation, and to his pleasure Zora smiled at him.

"I suppose that means I'm good. Thank you, Luffy."

"For what?"

"The compliment."

They entered the cave and it closed behind them. At first Luffy got nervous, he'd never been really found of dark places, but Zora started to glow with a gentle light as soon as the opening was fully closed.

The confinement was a bit small and the only thing inside was a shelf carved into the stone wall where some ten or fifteen books with leatherbacks stood in a neat row.

"Our world's history since before the disappearance of the sea and after," Zora explained quietly. "My parents and I risked our lives to get these books here so that we would be able to tell the story to the people here, to ease their heavy minds. But about half of the books are missing."

"Why? Couldn't you find all of them?" Luffy asked. The books he could care less about, but he didn't like the grim, hurt face Zora was making.

"We did get them all, but we needed to go two rounds. Father sacrificed himself to make sure mother and I got all the books here, but when we came back some smarthead had figured out the paper could be used for soup and most of the books we had left here were gone. Those fools out there ate them!"

For once Luffy didn't say anything. Something so important you are willing to die for it should never be disgraced no matter the reason, that was a fact, so the pirate captain could understand Zora's harm.

"Paper doesn't taste good," he stated after a long while.

"As long as it's edible we can eat just about anything. We'd eat each other if morals didn't keep us from it."

For the first time in his life Luffy felt his stomach turn in disgust. Zora ignored him and picked down the first book in the line and sat down with it on her crossed legs.

"This book is the most important one," she said and opened the book to the middle, flipping the pages a bit to find what she was looking for. "Look here."

Luffy sat down beside her and looked at the picture she pointed at. It looked like an enormous snake with a dragon's head, or something. There was something strange about the body.

"What's that?"

"The sea devil," Zora whispered and turned a few pages back. "Listen. The second year of Lord Dragon of the East Shaman clan's rule the Lord's wife Lady Delinda had a vision of the devil locked up at the bottom of the sea be released. Hearing this Lord Dragon gathered his wife and the eight strongest shamans of the clan and together to prepare for the coming crisis. Legend had it God himself sealed the devil at the bottom of the ocean where he would be forever doomed to be weighed down by the salt water and chained to the seabed with holy shackles.

Trusting the legend Lord Dragon and his allied climbed to the top of The Holy Mountain of the Dawn where they would be the closest to God and prayed for three days and three nights the symbol of the East Shaman clan be blessed to be able to fight the devil from the sea. God heeded the prayer and blessed ten items with the clan's symbol the shamans carried on them."

Zora silenced to let Luffy's brain catch up.

"…What does that mean?" the boy asked after a long while.

"Remember seeing nine items with this symbol in my hut?" Zora asked and pointed to the glowing medallion around her neck.

"Hm? Ah. I think so."

"I am a descendant from one of the ten this story tells about. Lord Dragon and his wife or one of the other shamans is my great great-great-great and some grandparent. This medallion is one of the items God blessed on that mountain."

"Is that good?" Luffy asked doubtfully, his thoughts on that Enel bastard who'd tried to kill his friends and take the gold bell to himself.

"These symbols are the reason mankind have survived for this long," Zora explained patiently.

"Oh. So it must have been some real God," the pirate thought out loud.

Zora gave him a long stare, wondering what he meant, but when Luffy blinked at her in that stupid, oblivious way of his, she decided to drop it and instead skipped to the last few pages of the book, showing another drawn picture.

"See this?"

Luffy looked but couldn't find something special. It was only a simple image of ten people on a high cliff and the sea below. "Yes?"

Zora started reading. "Autumn the ninth year of Lord Dragon of the East Shaman clan's rule the sea began to sink away. Startled by the phenomena Lord Dragon left the island with his trusted and me, leaving his wife and son behind to protect the clan while he set sails and followed the current, fearing this was what Lady Delinda had predicted. The ocean had never before been in such an uproar. As we followed the current we met sea creatures of all kinds trying to swim against it.

Only on the second day of sailing the ship hit the seabed and Lord Dragon ordered us to keep moving by foot.

When we finally arrived to the scene of crime we were shocked to find it was the work of a devil fruit user. He had eaten the Void fruit and used all his power to bring the entire ocean he feared and hated so much into the void. Lord Dragon tried to reason with the man to stop, but the man refused, saying he was doing all the devil fruit users a favour. He said; _When the sea is gone, the world's devil fruit users will have nothing to fear_."

"Is he an idiot?" Luffy exclaimed so suddenly Zora almost jumped. "How can we sail the sea if the sea's not there?! How are we supposed to go on adventures? How can we be pirates of the sea if there is no sea to pirate on!?"

Instead of covering his loud mouth, Zora gently caressed Luffy's cheek and smiled at his surprised look. She wished she could touch him without the gloves on, but he would probably be disgusted by her hand.

"You are such a good person, Luffy," she said gently. "Don't worry. I will send you home, one way or another, back to your world that still has a sea you can sail on."

"What about you, Zora? You can come with me."

She smiled again, an apologetically sad smile. "I can't. Because I am a shaman of the East Shaman clan, my purpose it so fight the sea devil."

"No."

"Eh?"

"You're not staying here. When you find a way to take me home, you're coming with me as my nakama."

And that was that. Luffy had made up her mind and nothing Zora would say or do could make him change it. She seemed to realize it too when she smiled at him again.

"That would be wonderful," she whispered.

"Good, then that's settled. What do we do now?"

A gasp for a laugh escaped Zora's lips. "There is not much to do here. Most of the time I just make sure the shield is fully intact, so that it won't be too dangerous for me to go out hunting."

"Can we go hunting?" Luffy asked hopefully. His stomach felt like an empty barrel and it growled loudly in agreement of the idea of food.

"No. You are too dangerous to hunt with and I'm in a mutual fight with Major."

Luffy's stomach growled again, louder. "But I'm so hungry! I need food! Meat! Lots and lots of meat!"

"Until you learn absolute silence in mouth and movement, I'm not taking you out."

The pirate opened his mouth to argue, but Zora scowled at him and her words sank in; absolute silence or no food. He closed his mouth tightly and gave the woman a stubborn look.

Zora held her ground. "I don't trust you, but if you manage to keep quiet until tomorrow morning, I'm willing to at least consider it."

"Really?"

"If you keep your mouth shut."

Luffy remembered himself and closed his mouth again. Zora shook her head with a smile and closed the book. There was another thing she had wanted to read for the boy, but figured it could wait until evening when she would be telling stories the villagers by the fire anyway. So for now she replaced the book on the shelf.

"Come. I'll show you the way around the caves here."

This time Luffy managed to answer with only a nod and he jumped up to follow the shaman out of the confinement.

Zora placed her hand on the wall, letting her own light fade just before she opened.

She froze. In front of her stood the major and every single villager behind him. None of them looked happy, Major looking especially angry.

"This is your fault, Shaman. You and that intruder. Because of you, the well has dried out. Now we don't have any water!"


End file.
